Birthdays, Cities and Knights
My birthday was Tuesday and it was a pleasant day. It is true though that once you pass 21, your birthday isn’t nearly as exciting or important until you start reaching those milestone ages like 30 and 40. And who really looks forward to those?
Anyway, in terms of a present run-down, I received a brown jacket (bought back in June) and money from my parents, money from my grandmother, a CD pouch, black strappy top and Hang Ten beach mat from my sister and her boyfriend, and a fragrance from my uncle and aunt. Paul bought me flowers and is going to be transferring some money into my bank account as a contribution towards my iPod Nano. His parents bought me waps, the short flippers for boyboarding... I mean bodyboarding- damn that’s a funny type-o.
Now I have to go through the shlepp of buying my iPod. ZAStore has the black 4GB for R2000, but they’ve been sold out since before Christmas, and I’m a bit wary of buying something that expensive and delicate online. I printed the list of approved Apple iPod retailers off the Apple.co.za website so now I have to pay them a visit and see how much their mark up is (if they have stock, which I’m actually doubtful about). If the mark up is too much, I guess I’ll have to wait it out with ZAStore and take a chance with them.
After cake and present opening, I played Fable for a few hours, catching up the hour of apprentice training that I had almost finished the night before until I quit, not realising that all the training counted as a single quest, and leaving the game reset my training. I’m in the process of setting my character up now as a fighter mage, although improved armour and upgrades are pretty expensive- the world of Fable is not that of Diablo, where opponents drop unique armour and other extremely exciting items.
Anyway, Paul, my sister and I went to Musgrave for the 1:30 show of Wallace of Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Being half-price Tuesday (though forgetting that I receive a free ticket on my birthday), I did the ye olde going-to-movies-on-your-birthday thing (remember the days of your parents paying for a whole troop of your friends to go to movies?) and paid for everyone’s tickets and popcorn and Coke.
Wallace and Gromit is really a superb family film, offering entertainment for adults and especially children (all the kids in the cinema loved it). I know there are people out there who hated the TV series, but the film is more accessible and action-packed. Even Paul, who disliked the series, enjoyed the film. This said, I’m not sure it was quite as good as Chicken Run, which was also made by the Aardman Animation team, but seemed to target a more mature viewer. However, Wallace and Gromit has a lot of visual puns, there is a very funny, tongue-in-cheek King Kong sequence, and the stop-motion animation is excellent. The film damn well runs rings around the flat, pointless Corpse Bride, the other big stop-motion film of 2005.
At home in the evening we had a very enjoyable dinner with my family: St Jacques starters followed by roast beef, with baby carrots, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach and gravy. Dessert was my requested favourite- pecan meringue pie. After that we just chilled in the lounge and watched some TV, specifically second episode of the new season of my favourite reality show, The Amazing Race. And that was my birthday.
The only thing that did kind of put a downer on day was having to change my birthday fondue evening from Friday 13th Jan to Saturday the 14th. I had just sent out the email and SMS invites the night before. The change occurred because porn-store Peter, Paul’s friend also has his birthday around the 15th, and his fiancé has booked a table at The Butcher Block on Friday evening. Doing the ‘good’ thing (seeing as a few of us are invited to both evenings), I changed the date of the fondue. I had a suspicion that it would mess up some people (I had sent out SMSes asking people what evening was better for them), and I was right. Later that afternoon I received a message from Gareth asking why I changed it because now Denbeigh couldn’t come. SMSes are ambigious when it comes to tone, and seeing as I was already mildly annoyed, the ‘Why did you change the day? Now Denbeigh can’t come…’ SMS, without a ‘Happy birthday’ in any part of it, just pissed me off to the point where Gareth got a snarky reply back.
Anyway, the other news of the past few days is that Paul bought the Cities and Knights expansion to the Settlers of Catan boardgame. Paul, Warren and myself spent Wednesday evening at Paul’s place, munching Mimmo’s pizza, and discovering how the expansion alters the basic game.
Settlers of Catan, for those of you who don’t know, is ‘a game of Discovery, Settlement and Trade’. Basically, all players compete to settle a previously undiscovered island, in the 15th Century, or so, although the setting doesn’t impact on gameplay. In terms of computer games, Settlers of Catan is probably closest to something like Imperialism, although you can apparently play a digitised version of Settlers itself on MSN.
Although played a great deal internationally (it won Boardgame of the Year in Germany in 1995, and received the US Boardgame of the Year in 1996), Settlers of Catan has never taken off in SA, a nation where the most popular boardgames are your basic roll the die and move variety. So playing it is like being in an exclusive club. Just for the record, in South Africa, the game is available at specialist gaming stores like Wizards in Windamere Centre in Durban, and online at www.boardgames.co.za. The only thing is that the copy Paul and I own is the original 2-4 player version. If we want to play with more than 4 people, we need to buy the 5-6 player expansion.
Anyway, what is nice about Settlers of Catan is that while it is exceptionally strategic, there are always multiple paths to victory. and you can generally always do something with the collected resource cards in your hand. It also isn’t a game of combat where some players get shut out early on and basically sit on the sidelines for the rest of the game. You are always involved and active in gameplay right until the end.
The Cities and Knights Expansion adds a kind of Age of Empires dynamic to the game, with upgrades available to buy for your settlements, as well as knights defend your territory, and barbarian attacks to fend off. Needless to say, this expansion adds more strategy to the game as well as nastiness, because failure to use knights to defend the island (and it can be your choice to do this or not) means weakest players have their cities destroyed. Real survivor stuff, and it’s really awesome. At the moment, Paul and I are in the process of designing our very own boardgame. But that’s pretty much top secret for now…
Anyway, in terms of a present run-down, I received a brown jacket (bought back in June) and money from my parents, money from my grandmother, a CD pouch, black strappy top and Hang Ten beach mat from my sister and her boyfriend, and a fragrance from my uncle and aunt. Paul bought me flowers and is going to be transferring some money into my bank account as a contribution towards my iPod Nano. His parents bought me waps, the short flippers for boyboarding... I mean bodyboarding- damn that’s a funny type-o.
Now I have to go through the shlepp of buying my iPod. ZAStore has the black 4GB for R2000, but they’ve been sold out since before Christmas, and I’m a bit wary of buying something that expensive and delicate online. I printed the list of approved Apple iPod retailers off the Apple.co.za website so now I have to pay them a visit and see how much their mark up is (if they have stock, which I’m actually doubtful about). If the mark up is too much, I guess I’ll have to wait it out with ZAStore and take a chance with them.
After cake and present opening, I played Fable for a few hours, catching up the hour of apprentice training that I had almost finished the night before until I quit, not realising that all the training counted as a single quest, and leaving the game reset my training. I’m in the process of setting my character up now as a fighter mage, although improved armour and upgrades are pretty expensive- the world of Fable is not that of Diablo, where opponents drop unique armour and other extremely exciting items.
Anyway, Paul, my sister and I went to Musgrave for the 1:30 show of Wallace of Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Being half-price Tuesday (though forgetting that I receive a free ticket on my birthday), I did the ye olde going-to-movies-on-your-birthday thing (remember the days of your parents paying for a whole troop of your friends to go to movies?) and paid for everyone’s tickets and popcorn and Coke.
Wallace and Gromit is really a superb family film, offering entertainment for adults and especially children (all the kids in the cinema loved it). I know there are people out there who hated the TV series, but the film is more accessible and action-packed. Even Paul, who disliked the series, enjoyed the film. This said, I’m not sure it was quite as good as Chicken Run, which was also made by the Aardman Animation team, but seemed to target a more mature viewer. However, Wallace and Gromit has a lot of visual puns, there is a very funny, tongue-in-cheek King Kong sequence, and the stop-motion animation is excellent. The film damn well runs rings around the flat, pointless Corpse Bride, the other big stop-motion film of 2005.
At home in the evening we had a very enjoyable dinner with my family: St Jacques starters followed by roast beef, with baby carrots, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach and gravy. Dessert was my requested favourite- pecan meringue pie. After that we just chilled in the lounge and watched some TV, specifically second episode of the new season of my favourite reality show, The Amazing Race. And that was my birthday.
The only thing that did kind of put a downer on day was having to change my birthday fondue evening from Friday 13th Jan to Saturday the 14th. I had just sent out the email and SMS invites the night before. The change occurred because porn-store Peter, Paul’s friend also has his birthday around the 15th, and his fiancé has booked a table at The Butcher Block on Friday evening. Doing the ‘good’ thing (seeing as a few of us are invited to both evenings), I changed the date of the fondue. I had a suspicion that it would mess up some people (I had sent out SMSes asking people what evening was better for them), and I was right. Later that afternoon I received a message from Gareth asking why I changed it because now Denbeigh couldn’t come. SMSes are ambigious when it comes to tone, and seeing as I was already mildly annoyed, the ‘Why did you change the day? Now Denbeigh can’t come…’ SMS, without a ‘Happy birthday’ in any part of it, just pissed me off to the point where Gareth got a snarky reply back.
Anyway, the other news of the past few days is that Paul bought the Cities and Knights expansion to the Settlers of Catan boardgame. Paul, Warren and myself spent Wednesday evening at Paul’s place, munching Mimmo’s pizza, and discovering how the expansion alters the basic game.
Settlers of Catan, for those of you who don’t know, is ‘a game of Discovery, Settlement and Trade’. Basically, all players compete to settle a previously undiscovered island, in the 15th Century, or so, although the setting doesn’t impact on gameplay. In terms of computer games, Settlers of Catan is probably closest to something like Imperialism, although you can apparently play a digitised version of Settlers itself on MSN.
Although played a great deal internationally (it won Boardgame of the Year in Germany in 1995, and received the US Boardgame of the Year in 1996), Settlers of Catan has never taken off in SA, a nation where the most popular boardgames are your basic roll the die and move variety. So playing it is like being in an exclusive club. Just for the record, in South Africa, the game is available at specialist gaming stores like Wizards in Windamere Centre in Durban, and online at www.boardgames.co.za. The only thing is that the copy Paul and I own is the original 2-4 player version. If we want to play with more than 4 people, we need to buy the 5-6 player expansion.
Anyway, what is nice about Settlers of Catan is that while it is exceptionally strategic, there are always multiple paths to victory. and you can generally always do something with the collected resource cards in your hand. It also isn’t a game of combat where some players get shut out early on and basically sit on the sidelines for the rest of the game. You are always involved and active in gameplay right until the end.
The Cities and Knights Expansion adds a kind of Age of Empires dynamic to the game, with upgrades available to buy for your settlements, as well as knights defend your territory, and barbarian attacks to fend off. Needless to say, this expansion adds more strategy to the game as well as nastiness, because failure to use knights to defend the island (and it can be your choice to do this or not) means weakest players have their cities destroyed. Real survivor stuff, and it’s really awesome. At the moment, Paul and I are in the process of designing our very own boardgame. But that’s pretty much top secret for now…
Comments
Damn internet, kinda fudles things up. Are you talking about the msg saying "thanks for wishing me Happy Birthday"? Cause I'd just posted "Happy Birthday" in that Pond thread about half an hour before that, so I thought you were talking about that, not being sarcastic...sorry, totally flew by me. I never know when you've sneakily popped online.
Cheers.